What annoys me is that this is easily achievable on today's hardware, as being proved by Infinity, but no games company seems willing to actual do it. X3 is okay, but the star map is a horrid grid, the travel between sectors is via gates (what is it with gates and space games?!) and there is no interaction with planets. On the upside you can have multiple ships, the economy is dynamic, you can build your own stations, and there are a lot of mods/plug-ins. I got so bored waiting for "Elite 4" or Infinity to be released I started making my own (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLAc1nm6w4E)!

My parents did the same thing! That's how I learn't to pick locks.

You seem to be attributing the censorship to those who do the actual censoring, whereas from what I can tell, politicians will simply do what they believe will make them most popular with the largest or safest segments of voters. If they can claim they will provide tough censorship for violence or sex, then that is less parenting that their voters are forced to do. So it seems more like it comes down to human nature. Parents are more interested in policies that allow them to not feel worried for their childrens fragile little minds when they plonk them infront of the TV for 8 hours, than they are about abstract ideas like freedom of expression. And of course politicians are more interested in policies that will get them votes than those which are in the long term best interests of the country, I guess because the kinds of long term effects that strong protection of freedom of expression or respect for particular art forms take more time to emerge than any particular politician is likely to be in office.

This will be all the more easy to achieve after they change the definition of definition.

People in above comments are talking about photogrammetry and voxels. This is not the technology refered to in this article. They specifically mention having to compress the photos to a great extent to get the game under 1 GB. I am 99% sure that what they are doing is simply storing a grid of 360 degree 'fisheye' photos, and then interpolating between them based on the camera position using some clever interpolation method. The technique is pretty obvious so I am guessing the technology they are so proud of is the interpolation method. This technique seems very restrictive to me, allowing no relighting or dynamic geometry. Its pretty much only good for this game. You can see in the video linked in a previous comment that there is no extra geometry in the scene when you are exploring it, not even your own legs ...

Except this would require accelerating to faster than the speed of light, which most people are pretty sure is impossible using current technology.

Wow, so an organisation that is mandated by the people (in as much as it is government funded) is forbidden from lobbying, but companies which are often in direct conflict with the general populace (e.g. **AA) can spend as much as they want on it?! How the hell did that come about?